2 Men Save Pilot From Flames

A small plane clipped power lines, gouged a hole in the roof of a house and crashed upside-down in a Lomita backyard Thursday evening, seriously injuring the pilot and starting a fire in the house.

Two men from the neighborhood, Jim Murphy, 42, and Bill Lockwood, 43, said they ran to the plane, kicked in a window and dragged the pilot from the wreckage.

“His legs and arms were pretty burned, and he had some cuts, but he was still conscious and coherent,” Murphy said. “He should be all right.”

Fire officials said the pilot was expected to survive. His name was not released, but he told rescuers that he was a flight instructor and resident of Torrance, Lockwood said.

He was alone in the plane, which had flown out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County and was registered to Sakaibara, a research firm in San Diego.

Margie Somers, 90, was in the front of the house when the plane struck a back bedroom. The house fire was quickly extinguished, and Somers, who was uninjured, seemed undaunted.

“I guess when you’re 90 years old, stuff doesn’t faze you much,” said her niece, Cathye Bremner, 55.

Federal officials said the plane may have run out of fuel as the pilot tried to land at Zamperini Field, the municipal airport in Torrance. The crash site in the 25000 block of Pennsylvania Avenue is about half a mile from the airport.

Donn Walker, an FAA spokesman, said that shortly before the single-engine Cessna 210 went down, the pilot radioed that he was low on fuel. However, county fire officials said there was fuel in the plane’s tanks after the crash.

A similar accident occurred on the same street in July 2003, when another small plane lost power, hit electric lines and crash-landed in the 25500 block. That pilot wasn’t seriously injured.

Thursday’s crash occurred about 5:30 p.m.

Murphy said he was watching television when he looked out a window and saw the Cessna making a descent toward the airport.

“It was a lot lower than they usually are,” he said. “It disappeared from view, and then I saw and heard an explosion.”

Murphy said that he and Lockwood, his roommate, ran outside and found a house on fire. Beside the house was the overturned airplane, which was on fire.

Some neighbors used garden hoses and threw dirt on the plane to douse the flames.

“Then a man said someone was still in the plane,” Lockwood said. Lockwood tried unsuccessfully to pry open the cockpit door, then Murphy kicked in a window.

Struggling against the heat and smoke, the roommates got the pilot to twist his body until they could reach him.

“We grabbed his arms and his belt and we pulled,” Murphy said. “And we got him out.”

Fire officials said that the pilot was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance and that his condition was not known.

Armando Lewin, 42, a flight instructor at the Torrance airport and a resident of the neighborhood where the crash occurred, said he ran to the scene and recognized the plane as one flown by a fellow instructor at the airport. He described the pilot as “very knowledgeable and real businesslike.”

“He’s got a lot of experience,” Lewin said.